Virus shutting off access to outside world

A while back I ran into an issue when one of my PCs was infected with some kind of virus that stopped my access to go out to various virus protection websites, Google, etc. It turns out there is a file in Windows similar the one I am familiar with in UNIX called hosts. Here's a quick tip to help regaina ccess to the outside world if you run into a similar issue... C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts Make sure the only line in this file is "127.0.0.1 Localhost" If you've been infected by a spyware/Virus/Trojan/Adware... etc... it may have change this file so when you type in google.com or some other address it could redirect you over a specified ip, instead of looking up the address "normally."